Towards a dynamic risk and barrier assessment in an IO context

Lessons learned from recent industry events show that accident root causes can be identified in a general drift towards inadequate risk management or explicit changes in risk-relevant processes. Degrading behavior of the system due to increasing maintenance backlogs or temporary impairment of safety functions related to installation modifications often occur without the potential effect on the risk picture being properly assessed. However, real-time assessment of risk could provide a basis for dynamic adjustments of inspection and maintenance plans or implementation of risk reducing measures while maintaining production. For this reason, Integrated Operations (IO) solutions in the petroleum industry are being developed to improve the assessment of safety barrier performances and the prediction of dynamic trends and risk evolvement by means of new information and communication technologies. This contribution presents work that is being developed within the Center for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry (Norway). It firstly describes the approach adopted to refine current risk and barrier assessment processes, in order to lay the foundations for a dynamic IO-based methodology. Secondly, preliminary results obtained from case-studies in the oil and gas sector are illustrated. In order to combine different experiences for a robust decision support system, IO concepts from other industries are also taken into account, such as critical safety function methods from the nuclear industry and mission success concepts from the space program. Specific methods have been evaluated with regard to their ability to support critical decisions by providing key information on barrier and safety function status in an intuitive and visual form. Increased awareness of barrier conditions and enhanced possibilities provided by IO to improve barrier management will represent not only a more robust framework for preventing undesirable events, but also an important value to industry.